12/27/2018 Data acquisition with PyUL — SciPy Cookbook documentation

Contents » Input & Output » Data acquisi on with PyUL

Data acquisition with PyUL

Date: 2007-06-16 (last modified), 2006-11-06 (created)

Introduction
This pages illustrates the use of the inexpensive (about $150) PMD USB-1208FS data
acquisi on device from Measurement Compu ng. It makes use of PyUniversalLibrary, an
open-source wrapper of Measurement Compu ng's Universal Library.

See also Data acquisi on with Ni-DAQmx.

The following examples were made with PyUL Release 20050624. The pre-compiled win32
binaries of this version are compa ble with the Enthought Edi on of Python 2.4 (Release
1.0.0, 2006-08-02 12:20), which is what was used to run these examples.

Example 1 - Simple Analog input

The first example illustrates the use of the unbuffered analog input:

In [ ]:
# example1.py
import UniversalLibrary as UL
import time

BoardNum = 0
Gain = UL.BIP5VOLTS
Chan = 0

tstart = time.time()
data = []
times = []
while 1:
DataValue = UL.cbAIn(BoardNum, Chan, Gain)
data.append( DataValue )
times.append( time.time()-tstart )
if times[-1] > 1.0:
break

import pylab
pylab.plot(times,data,'o-')
pylab.xlabel('time (sec)')
pylab.ylabel('ADC units')
pylab.show()

https://scipy-cookbook.readthedocs.io/items/Data_Acquisition_with_PyUL.html 1/9
12/27/2018 Data acquisition with PyUL — SciPy Cookbook documentation
When I ran this, I had a func on generator genera ng a sine wave connected to pins 1 and 2
of my device. This should produce a figure like the following:

Example 2 - Getting Volts rather than arbitrary units

The values recorded in example 1 are "ADC units", the values recorded directly by the Analog-
to-Digital hardware. In fact, this device has a 12-bit A to D converter, but the values are stored
as 16-bit signed integers. To convert these values to Volts, we use Measurement Compu ng's
func on. Here we do that for each piece of data and plot the results.

https://scipy-cookbook.readthedocs.io/items/Data_Acquisition_with_PyUL.html 2/9
12/27/2018
In [ ]: Data acquisition with PyUL — SciPy Cookbook documentation
#example2.py
import UniversalLibrary as UL
import time

BoardNum = 0
Gain = UL.BIP5VOLTS
Chan = 0

tstart = time.time()
data = []
times = []
while 1:
DataValue = UL.cbAIn(BoardNum, Chan, Gain)
EngUnits = UL.cbToEngUnits(BoardNum, Gain, DataValue)
data.append( EngUnits )
times.append( time.time()-tstart )
if times[-1] > 1.0:
break

import pylab
pylab.plot(times,data,'o-')
pylab.xlabel('time (sec)')
pylab.ylabel('Volts')
#pylab.savefig('example2.png',dpi=72)
pylab.show()

https://scipy-cookbook.readthedocs.io/items/Data_Acquisition_with_PyUL.html 3/9
12/27/2018 Data acquisition with PyUL — SciPy Cookbook documentation
Now the output values are in volts:

Example 3 - Buffered input

As you have no doubt no ced, the plots above aren't very "pure" sine waves. This is
undoubtedly due to the way we're sampling the data. Rather than relying on a steady clock to
do our acquisi on, we're simply polling the device as fast as it (and the opera ng system) will
let us go. There's a be er way - we can use the clock on board the Measurement Compu ng
device to acquire a buffer of data at evenly spaced samples.

https://scipy-cookbook.readthedocs.io/items/Data_Acquisition_with_PyUL.html 4/9
12/27/2018
In [ ]: Data acquisition with PyUL — SciPy Cookbook documentation
#example3.py
import UniversalLibrary as UL
import Numeric
import pylab

BoardNum = 0
Gain = UL.BIP5VOLTS

LowChan = 0
HighChan = 0

Count = 2000
Rate = 3125

Options = UL.CONVERTDATA
ADData = Numeric.zeros((Count,), Numeric.Int16)

ActualRate = UL.cbAInScan(BoardNum, LowChan, HighChan, Count,

Rate, Gain, ADData, Options)

# convert to Volts
data_in_volts = [ UL.cbToEngUnits(BoardNum, Gain, y) for y in ADData]

time = Numeric.arange( ADData.shape[0] )*1.0/ActualRate

pylab.plot(time, data_in_volts, 'o-')

pylab.xlabel('time (sec)')
pylab.ylabel('Volts')
pylab.savefig('example3.png',dpi=72)
pylab.show()

https://scipy-cookbook.readthedocs.io/items/Data_Acquisition_with_PyUL.html 5/9
12/27/2018 Data acquisition with PyUL — SciPy Cookbook documentation
The output looks much be er:

Example 4 - computing the power spectrum

Now we can use the func on from pylab (part of matplotlib) to compute the power spectral
density.

https://scipy-cookbook.readthedocs.io/items/Data_Acquisition_with_PyUL.html 6/9
12/27/2018
In [ ]: Data acquisition with PyUL — SciPy Cookbook documentation
#example4.py
import UniversalLibrary as UL
import Numeric
import pylab

BoardNum = 0
Gain = UL.BIP5VOLTS

LowChan = 0
HighChan = 0

Count = 2000
Rate = 10000

Options = UL.CONVERTDATA
ADData = Numeric.zeros((Count,), Numeric.Int16)

ActualRate = UL.cbAInScan(BoardNum, LowChan, HighChan, Count,

Rate, Gain, ADData, Options)
time = Numeric.arange( ADData.shape[0] )*1.0/ActualRate

# convert to Volts
data_in_volts = [ UL.cbToEngUnits(BoardNum, Gain, y) for y in ADData]
data_in_volts = Numeric.array(data_in_volts) # convert to Numeric array

pxx, freqs = pylab.psd( data_in_volts, Fs=ActualRate )

decibels = 10*Numeric.log10(pxx)
pylab.subplot(2,1,1)
pylab.plot(time[100:200],data_in_volts[100:200],'o-') # plot a few samples
pylab.xlabel('time (sec)')
pylab.ylabel('Volts')
pylab.subplot(2,1,2)
pylab.plot(freqs, decibels, 'o-')
pylab.xlabel('frequency')
pylab.ylabel('Power (decibels)')
pylab.savefig('example4.png',dpi=72)
pylab.show()

https://scipy-cookbook.readthedocs.io/items/Data_Acquisition_with_PyUL.html 7/9
12/27/2018 Data acquisition with PyUL — SciPy Cookbook documentation
For this example, I've turned up the frequency on the func on generator to 480 Hz. You can
see, indeed, that's what the psd() func on tells us:

Sec on author: AndrewStraw

A achments

 example1.png
 example2.png
https://scipy-cookbook.readthedocs.io/items/Data_Acquisition_with_PyUL.html 8/9
12/27/2018  example3.png Data acquisition with PyUL — SciPy Cookbook documentation

 example4.png

https://scipy-cookbook.readthedocs.io/items/Data_Acquisition_with_PyUL.html 9/9